I love the claw so much <3

[ScallopPotato]

I'm building a massive mothership in the game. First, I would like to thank Kerbal Attachment System for the strut end points. Without them, this ship wouldn't be feasible.

But I'm finding new uses for the claw every week and I love it. It makes so many things much easier.

For one, I can just attach the claw to one of my standard orbital vehicles (it looks like an apollo module) and use it to deorbit debris. Beforehand, I would've had to use a complicated and relatively dangerous set of electromagnets and winches in KAS to do the same job.

But, using the same craft, I can assemble pieces in orbit without having probe cores and RCS on every structural piece. I've used the probe core + RCS to assemble things before, but the number of pieces was only two. This ship is going to have dozens on structural pieces, and eliminating probe and RCS will cut down on the part count.

The reason for using pieces is because I'm using Ferram and I want to keep my fairings reasonably sized. Thus, I'm not going to send up each piece unfolded. I could use IR, which would make the process even simpler, but I'm glad I didn't due to the 23.5 compatibility issues.

I really want to post pictures of my ship because it's GONNA BE AWESOME.

[xrayfishx]

Funny, I've never even used the claw. I have exactly one probe in orbit that has the claw attached to it, but I f'd up with KSPI mechanics so it's basically just debris.

[ArmchairGravy]

I hadn't thought to use the claw for orbital assembly. Saving 10 parts per node will stack up quickly. Thanks for the idea!

[Tex]

I've got a system of ground-based rovers called Klaw Trucks that can tow whatever I need wherever I... need.

[Werwolf]

Have used the claw once.... grappled an asteroid second day of ARM update, quickly stopped caring about asteroids when I realized you can't put flags, can't use them as kethane bases, etc. Never thought to use it as a ship builder....

[Madrias]

I've captured two asteroids with the Claw, but I've found it to be most useful for dragging debris into suborbital trajectories. No more building strut-ships in Career Mode to deorbit that booster I left up there on Day One and having to sit through orbital cycles because timewarp turns off collisions. Now I can go up, grab it with the Claw, give it a firm shove retrograde, decouple, and keep my sanity (what little is left of it) while clearing my skies.

[Apache600]

Hahaha, @ Madrias, I thought i was one of the only ones peeved about orbiting debris. I would sometimes stage a sequence that had a little fuel left, just because the lowest orbit point for it was 69.5 km.

[Merinsan]

I have already used the claw to help construction. Building a base on an asteroid, a part I sent up needed to be flipped for docking, so attached 2 claws to the ship.

Once I got up there, I decoupled the part, grabbed it with one of the claws then gently guided it into position.

Without the claw I would have had to line it up with a tug between the docking ports, detach and get the tug out of the way and let the part drift in itself, which is sometimes hard to do.

I've also attempted to deorbit debris with the claw, with a rather disastrous result. The claw flexed when the engine was turned on, and the ship ripped apart. I now have 3 pieces of debris!

[Werwolf]

I've captured two asteroids with the Claw, but I've found it to be most useful for dragging debris into suborbital trajectories. No more building strut-ships in Career Mode to deorbit that booster I left up there on Day One and having to sit through orbital cycles because timewarp turns off collisions. Now I can go up, grab it with the Claw, give it a firm shove retrograde, decouple, and keep my sanity (what little is left of it) while clearing my skies.

hehe... forgot about strut ships.

[Tortoise]

I never even used the claw before, lol.

[Bilfr3d]

Yes I love the claw too

[Pwnstarr]

I am very happy for the claw, docking ports are overrated!

[Killerdude8]

Wait, You guys actually Deorbit Debris?

I leave it free floating as some form of Orbital Museum.

Reminders of both successful missions and disastrous failures.

[Madrias]

After having a stray booster smash through my space station, yeah, you bet I deorbit my debris.

[Zeroignite]

I stage to leave LKO pretty clean. There's some stuff in long elliptical orbits from transfer burns.

...of course that means if it hits a station, the relative velocity will be extra-big.

[cantab]

To me it doesn't feel "right" using it to replace regular docking. After all, you're jabbing a sharp thing into the side of the target ship.

Then again, I've no qualms about terminating debris and having the limit set down low, but that's because my PC struggles to run KSP. Though I do deorbit my launch stages now anyway.

For in-orbit assembly, the choice is between autonomous modules and a separate tug. Using the claw on the tug saves you zero or one part per module.

[NecroBones]

I've done some junk removal, and I try to design all of my rockets to be able to de-orbit used stages with a small fuel reserve and probe core. But all my older spent boosters stayed up for a very long time, until I finally just decided to terminate most of them from the tracking station, so that quicksaves and the like will execute faster. One I proved I could do them manually a few times, I decided to "pretend that was on-going in the background."

[Franklin]

After having a stray booster smash through my space station, yeah, you bet I deorbit my debris.

It's about designating highways. 100K orbit is a highway, meant as a bridging orbit to get from A to B. Gonna be a lot of junk in this corridor.

You'd never park your car [space station] on the highway, you're just asking to be clipped.

[Franklin]

And yeah, the klaw's made tow-truck rovers a lot more fun.